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Fillet of Anchovy

A toasted bread sandwich topped with anchovy paste, sliced eggs, butter‑stuffed olives, and whole anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fillet of Anchovy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread in thin slices and cut into fancy shapes with a cookie cutter.

  2. Spread the toasted bread with anchovy paste.

Assemble

  1. Slice the hard-boiled eggs crossways and lay them on the anchovied toast.

  2. Stone the French olives and fill them with fresh butter.

  3. Coil the whole anchovies around the stuffed olives.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Anchovy + olivetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together880 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Slices of bread
Provides the crisp, toasted base that holds the other toppings.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savory flavor to the toast.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds mild, creamy richness and texture to the toast.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat to the stuffed olives.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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